FODPlod (#38)
...These vessels were totally bereft of air cover when they were saturated by Japanese aircraft...
The story that we were later told out there was: After the first attack, Admiral Phillips broke radio silence, not to ask for aircraft cover against the second attack which was sure to come - but merely for a tug from Singapore to help his crippled flagship POW (limping, on one shaft at 1½ kts), back to port. AHQ at Singapore took no action; and it was left to a Flt Lt Tim Vigors (temporarily in command of a "Buffalo" squadron), to recognise the danger and order a scramble. But he was too late: when they arrived on the scene, the second attack had come, and the ship was on the bottom.
What good the "Buffaloes" could have done is questionable, but you do not have to shoot down a torpedo bomber, it is enough to molest it, to put it "off its stroke" on its torpedo run. (Or so I would suppose, knowing, as I do, nothing about it). "Owt is better'n Nowt", as they say in these parts.
...which had taken a leaf out of the Fleet Air Arm's book and specialised in attacking ships...
Taranto was the model for Pearl Harbor.
... For all that, the two capital ships managed to evade over 40 of the 49 torpedoes launched against them and as few as six (but possibly eight) found their target (link)...
But they were enough !
"A properly handled capital ship can always beat off air attack". Phillips had declared - and, to be fair to him, I believe it was the Admiralty thinking at the time (he went down with his ship).
It was one of our greatest Naval disasters of the war, and Wiki states 840 casualties tho' at the time 1,200 was the figure IIRC.